24 July, 1891 — HWI Wizards Chess Tournament, Hogsmeade Hall

Ford was mostly here in solidarity with his sisters. Both Verity and Grace had shown an interest in competing (but not Clementine, which was almost a little suspicious given what he knew of her generally competitive nature — was she still pouting about not being able to summer in France?) and it seemed strange to send them into the fray without signing up to play a few matches himself. And he wasn't bad at chess, by any means, but neither did he expect to go more than one or two rounds before he ceded the floor to more skilled players and spent the rest of the afternoon eating jellied candies with his mother in the area that had been reserved for the audience.

At least his first competitor was probably someone with whom he'd be able to find something to talk about during the match. Ford was good at finding things to talk about with almost anyone, of course. It was a skill that served him very well in the spirit division. He had the impression that the older someone was, however, the more seriously they probably took chess matches. Someone like that ancient Professor or a wizened member of the Wizengamot might not take very kindly to his attempts at conversation, which would make the match dull indeed. The person sitting across from him was his age or perhaps a little younger, with a name that was familiar though he didn't immediately remember why.

"Were you in my brother Noble's year?" he asked as they took their seats. "Sorry, I'm trying to figure out where I know your name from. Ford Greengrass," he said by way of introduction, though presumably the other gentleman would have already known that from seeing his name on the competition roster for this round.

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Theodore Gallivan | Elias Grimstone

  

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Set by Lady!

Theo didn’t make a habit of entering public competitions, not anymore – he had used to like duelling, but after not completing his auror training, and accidentally giving some Hogwarts matron a black eye in the last tournament, he’d thought better of it – but chess, chess was safe. And Veronica knew he had always liked chess, and had suggested it – and he knew she would be pleased if he agreed to something like this, just for once.

He was not in great practice, though, or at least didn’t play nearly as often as he had at school. And Theo wasn’t sure how much ‘being able to best his half-siblings in a game if he wanted to’ was saying about his skill-level, given that they were a seven- and a nine-year-old who were still learning to play. But he had used to be good. So they would see.

Fortunately his first opponent looked more friendly than he did intimidating – and at least Theo didn’t have to make conversation with one of the debutantes populating the hall. (He hadn’t known chess competitions were so favoured by society sorts as this.) Having echoed his name in turn as they sat down, now Theo said easily: “Ah, yeah, I was – Ravenclaw, though.” The other Greengrass was far more familiar to him than Ford, anyway; nothing was coming to mind about this Greengrass brother. “But it’s probably that,” he agreed, absently straightening his pieces in place as he waited for the other man to make the first move. “That or from quidditch, I s’pose.” Most people probably still thought of his father first by it, rather than him, but Gallivan at least was a familiar name to most who followed the league. If Greengrass followed the league.

Theo hoped one or the other explained it, anyway, because he wasn’t sure there was anything else he particularly wanted to be known for.

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Ford was the sort of person who tended to remember names and faces, even when he hadn't interacted with someone in years since they'd graduated school. He was also not the type of person to follow professional Quidditch at anything more than a superficial level, and certainly he didn't follow the individuals involved in it. It was with mild surprise then that he realized Gallivan was right — the more recent connection, and the one that had been rattling around in his brain, was related to Quidditch.

"Oh, that's right. Lestrange mentioned you," he supplied. He didn't particularly want to elaborate on the context Gallivan's name had come up in, because it had been when Lestrange was inviting him and Grace to go watch a Quidditch match in Gallivan's box. If he said anything about it, it might seem that he was angling for an invite, which was just sort of tactless — and overlooked the part where he absolutely didn't want to go. Watching a Quidditch match was one thing; he knew enough to follow along and he probably would have enjoyed seeing Cash catch a snitch, he imagined. Pretending he was a Quidditch person when he was surrounded by actual Quidditch people was something else entirely, and it sounded exhausting.

Rather than explaining, he turned his attention to the board and moved one of his pawns out.

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Set by Lady!

Oh, of course. It couldn’t just be that’s right, the Cannons, could it? It had to be Lestrange mentioned you, and if his mouth went dry or his stomach did a stupid little flip he just had to ignore it; instead Theo trained his gaze purposefully on the board as Greengrass moved a pawn out, although suddenly he wasn’t thinking about chess at all.

“Oh –” he managed in a tone that was appropriately neutral-to-pleasantly-surprised, selecting a pawn to move entirely at random and trying to come up with something normal to say to that, “– you know Lestrange?” Really the question itching in the back of his mind was what did he say about me? but that was – incredibly moronic, because presumably sometimes Chudley players did have to mention people like their sponsor in passing. And, well, it wasn’t like Lestrange would have said anything else.

So he glanced up again with a little genuine curiosity, though he was half hoping Greengrass would be too busy making his next chess move to explain just how well he knew Cash.

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Ford wrinkled his nose slightly at Gallivan's move, trying to figure out if this was a strategy he hadn't seen before. Ford was hardly a chess afficionado, but he'd played often enough with his siblings that he recognized many of the standard opening strategies, and this was one was new. Maybe he was outmatched and Gallivan was about to beat him handily (fine — it wasn't as though he were particularly invested in this chess tournament) or maybe Gallivan didn't play often enough that he had opening strategies, and he was just trying to get pieces out on the board and see how things developed and go from there.

"Mm, we're friends," Ford answered succinctly, as he chose a second piece to move. He might have said something about being in the same year as each other at Hogwarts, since that was the readiest explanation for how and why they'd become friends, but they hadn't really been anything more than passing acquaintances back then. Gallivan was close enough to their age — and probably close enough socially to the popular Quidditch types that Cash actually had been friends with in school — that he might have noticed Ford was exaggerating, though. And anyway, it wasn't like he even had to explain it. Mama and his sisters might have needled him for details, but he hardly owed every passing stranger a history of all his friendships.

He chose a second pawn and moved it out, blocking the one Gallivan had just moved out.

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He’d fluffed his first move, that was obvious – couldn’t get out the bishop yet like how he’d meant to start the attack – so Theo tried his best to start afresh, and picked out a knight to move instead.

Mm, we're friends. That was... all he was going to say? That ought to be better – it made it easier to brush past the topic – but that could mean anything, and in the absence of more information, his brain began filling in the blanks with possibilities. The kind of society friends all the old pureblood families were? An old schoolfriend? Or a real friend, one close enough to know that Cassius Lestrange wasn’t exactly all right? (Or maybe he was the same kind of ‘friend’ Theo was, and – )

Not that it mattered: this was about chess, he shouldn’t need to be practising a poker face. “Well, hopefully he didn’t say anything too bad about me,” Theo joked, pulling a face briefly (– Christ, he hoped it was a joke –) because griping about their bosses was something people did with their friends, usually. He leant back to seem more at ease, fighting the urge to fidget while he waited for his next turn.

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Ford still wasn't sure where Gallivan was going with this (the chess game, not the conversation — the latter seemed fairly obviously doomed to remain in the realm of comfortable small talk for the duration) but realized he probably wasn't going to have a revelation on that point during this round. Either this was some secret genius, and he wasn't going to figure it out until the trap was almost sprung, or it was haphazard, and trying to figure it out would only be a waste of his time.

"Not that I recall," Ford replied easily, as he considered which of two pieces he ought to move next. He chose one, then glanced up at Gallivan with a raised brow. "Should he have?"

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Set by Lady!

Should he have? Theo had been through auror exams and interrogation training exercises that were less painful than this. “No, he shouldn’t,” he said, with the most unaffected shrug he could muster, “I gave him a promotion and all.” (And a few other things that had job in the name so were obviously totally workplace-appropriate.)

Well, this was the – worst conversation ever and he needed to change the subject now, so he added swiftly, “– so what do you do?” And if that didn’t work, then... maybe Theo should sacrifice the last of his pride, continue as he’d begun, and just try to lose this chess game as (inconspicuously) quickly as humanly possible. At least he hadn’t yet stooped low enough to make that the Cannons’ tactic for a quidditch match, Theo thought miserably, moving another piece.

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Ford looked a little skeptical at the bit about the promotion (surely that had to be a conflict of interest or something, right? You couldn't be in charge of handing out promotions to people you were schoolmates with — where was the meritocracy in that? Gallivan couldn't possibly be objective about Lestrange's merits as a captain, could he?) but brightened immediately when the subject changed. He liked his work considerably more than he liked most other aspects of his life, so he was pleased to talk about it.

"Spirit division, at the Ministry," he supplied as he considered his options for his next move. "Mostly newer spirits and Muggles who think their house is haunted. I'm not senior enough to do much with any of the high-profile ghosts yet." The Hogwarts ghosts who had initially inspired him to this particular career were farthest from his purview now that he had the job; with their influence over the safety and morality of the young minds of the wizarding world, they were about the highest profile ghosts in the country.

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Set by Lady!

He still couldn’t see a way of clawing back a win from this chess game, so he was still committed to losing fast, but at least the knot of tightness in his chest had gone. He could breathe. The spirit division. Sure. Theo knew nothing about the Spirit division, but it wasn’t Law Enforcement; it wasn’t quidditch; it was nothing to do with Cassius Lestrange, so – he’d take it.

“Oh,” Theo said, in a tone of mild curiosity, choosing between a pair of pieces – which to move out of danger, and which to sacrifice first. “And are muggles’ houses ever really haunted?” Of all magical creatures and beings, he felt like he knew the least about ghosts, at least those beyond Hogwarts – but he’d grown up in London with a mostly muggle family – been raised nearly muggleborn, himself – so he did have to genuinely wonder about that.

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"Sometimes," he said brightly. That was always a pleasant discovery, because usually if a ghost had been stuck haunting a Muggle house for any significant length of time they were eager for someone else to talk to. "But usually not. Sometimes it's something else magical, like a little muggleborn they don't know about yet doing magic or an infestation of pixies or something. Usually it's just their house." Ford shrugged and surveyed the chess board. His next move seemed obvious, because he could claim one of Gallivan's pieces. Was Gallivan bad at chess, or so good at it that his strategy was going entirely over Ford's head?

Well, no use fretting over it. Ford took the piece.

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Set by Lady!

Sometimes. He hadn’t been able to keep up Ghoul Studies at Hogwarts, with all the auror-important classes to focus on, but this was an interesting topic and it seemed like an entertaining job, and Theo tried to picture what he or Cecily would have thought when they were younger, before they’d had any knowledge of magic, if they’d begun to hear strange noises in the night or clanking chains or creaking doors. Probably ghosts, to be fair. (And then they’d come to terms with magic, and the monster in the house had turned out to be their father in the cellar instead, so.)

Theo only managed to get in a question or two more about Greengrass’ work before he found himself caught in a checkmate, and to Greengrass’ credit, by then he was almost disappointed. “Well, good game,” Theo said half-heartedly, although it hadn’t been – it had been nothing short of disastrously embarrassing. But it meant the tournament was over for him; and it probably didn’t matter what this Greengrass brother thought of him or his pitiable chess playing, anyway.

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"See you around," Ford said pleasantly, though he had no reason to suppose he would, unless he took Cash up on the offer of the Quidditch tickets sometime. Still, he'd enjoyed the game well enough. It was a bit of an ego boost to win a game against someone other than his sister, since he seldom played outside of their home. And anyway, he was easily won over by anyone who seemed genuinely interested in ghosts.

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